by Miles Keaton Andrew ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 6, 2002
Fast, funny, and remarkably good-natured: You’ll die laughing.
An extremely funny debut novel, set mostly within the confines of a funeral home that hugs the shoreline of bad taste without actually running aground.
Had he been born about 20 years later, Casey Kight would have been a Goth—as it was, in 1974, he was just plain weird. Orphaned at ten, when his parents died in a plane crash, Casey wore a black suit to school (which may have been why he never found a girlfriend) and for good luck carried the key to a funeral parlor with him everywhere he went. On his 21st birthday, he was hired by the Morton-Albright Funeral Home in Angel Shores, Florida, and began work as a mortuary apprentice. His boss, Jerry Stiles, was blunt in his assessment: “There are only three types of men working in the funeral trade: those born into it, those married into it, and those drawn into it. It’s the latter type that gives me pause.” Casey was drawn all right, but he’s not morbid—he’s a natural. Soon he is living at the home as well as working there (much of their business comes in after-hours, you see), and Jerry is fixing him up with his daughter Natalie (who likes to bite people and keeps a photo album of, well, corpses). Apparently old Colton Albright, who owns the business, put a clause in his will leaving everything to the youngest member of the family with a male heir, so Jerry sees an opportunity for his daughter and Casey to get busy. Fast. Because Colton’s got one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel, as they say in the trade. But there are other problems, too, not the least of which is the Jacob Funeral Trust, a conglomerate that is buying up every independent funeral home in the South and has Morton-Albright in its crosshairs. Is there any chance of a normal life for Casey? Or will his weirdest dreams come true?
Fast, funny, and remarkably good-natured: You’ll die laughing.Pub Date: March 6, 2002
ISBN: 0-312-27462-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2002
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by Georgia Hunter ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 14, 2017
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.
Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.
Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “You’ll get only one shot at this,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “Don’t botch it.” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “That form is a deal breaker,” he tells himself. “It’s life and death.” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
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BOOK TO SCREEN
by Chaim Potok ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 28, 1967
This first novel, ostensibly about the friendship between two boys, Reuven and Danny, from the time when they are fourteen on opposing yeshiva ball clubs, is actually a gently didactic differentiation between two aspects of the Jewish faith, the Hasidic and the Orthodox. Primarily the Hasidic, the little known mystics with their beards, earlocks and stringently reclusive way of life. According to Reuven's father who is a Zionist, an activist, they are fanatics; according to Danny's, other Jews are apostates and Zionists "goyim." The schisms here are reflected through discussions, between fathers and sons, and through the separation imposed on the two boys for two years which still does not affect their lasting friendship or enduring hopes: Danny goes on to become a psychiatrist refusing his inherited position of "tzaddik"; Reuven a rabbi.... The explanation, in fact exegesis, of Jewish culture and learning, of the special dedication of the Hasidic with its emphasis on mind and soul, is done in sufficiently facile form to engage one's interest and sentiment. The publishers however see a much wider audience for The Chosen. If they "rub their tzitzis for good luck,"—perhaps—although we doubt it.
Pub Date: April 28, 1967
ISBN: 0449911543
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1967
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